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The Rhino Stamp Project

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A campaign designed to invade borders. There are 29000 rhinos left in the world. South Africa is home to 75% of them. Their horns sell on the black market for more than $60000 per kilogram, to be ground and used as a hypothetical cure for cancer or a vitality tonic for the wealthy. South Africa faces a massive challenge, an almost impossible one, in protecting one of our national symbols, one of our big five. Despite abundant petitions and awareness campaigns, the numbers of our rhinos killed continue to soar. We needed to find a way to talk directly to those responsible for creating the demand and show them what they were doing. So we reinvented age-old postage stamps and turned them into our new medium. But they aren’t ordinary stamps. The usual breathtaking imagery of our animals has been replaced by the carnage that poachers leave behind. Each stamp includes a message in Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai reading: “say no to rhino horn.” Letters with our stamps on them, will not only be sent straight to the perpetrators, but will also speak directly to them. We created a way to take the fight out of our vast bushveld and put it in the hands of those who are ultimately responsible. We then used our stamps to create posters that will be put up countrywide, rallying the South Africa public to attach one to all letters leaving our shores for China, Vietnam or Thailand. We have also created stamp booklets that will handed out used as inserts and direct mailers, making sure that each and every stamp sent becomes a direct mailer from us to them. We hope this campaign will start a serious conversation and will continue to do so during it’s roll out and so that we’ll see less of our rhinos being killed. The only way to end the slaughter is to end the demand.